Having one perfect thing was less important than having a range of ideas, realizing they were all taking you in a certain direction.

Movie narration in the forties was radically different than the narrative involved in books.

My next film is always shaped by the last one... by the things I feel I didn't get right, or the things I like and want to try to develop further, but it always comes out of the last picture.

I was dyslexic before anybody knew what dyslexia was. I was called 'slow'. It's an awful feeling to think of yourself as 'slow' - it's horrible.

Beauty doesn't have anything to do with prettiness. Beauty has to do with something else; it gets into an area where words can't go.

People who go for humor are wonderful because they do great humor. People who go for wit and end up with humor are people who have made a mistake.

There was a kind of cultural life in New York that wasn't as solidified as it is now, it wasn't as money-driven. If you look at the size of the successful art galleries compared to the size of galleries now - there was no such thing as the Gagosian Gallery or Pace Gallery. But it was a time when magazines were a vital part of American life, and Esquire gave me a free pass to every world - I could get to the art world, the theater world, the movie world. It allowed you to roam through the cultural life of New York City.